


Screwed

by Waldo



Series: Screwed and Genius [2]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s01e11 Colonial Day, F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-16
Updated: 2005-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:36:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/pseuds/Waldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time she'd screwed herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Screwed

**Author's Note:**

> Partner fic to "Genius".

She'd ducked into the nearest public bathroom to finish getting dressed. She was really starting to hate the damn dress. She wanted a uniform, but if she wanted to make it back to her quarters without getting stopped (or arrested), she needed to put the damn thing back on.

Once covered, she headed back into the halls. The heels she'd scrounged up were a size too small and her feet were killing her, but she decided that she really didn't want to go back to the bunkroom and risk running into Lee.

After she'd passed three or four doors, she decided frak it, and pulled off the shoes, walking through the halls barefoot.

Her subconscious mind brought her to the hangar bay. She climbed up to the upper deck, and then sat cross-legged on the floor by the railing, watching the ground crews fuel and fix the fighters.

She looked over the ships, wondering if she could get her flightsuit out of her locker and go out for short ride without Lee knowing. Her knee was feeling much better and a nice quiet patrol wouldn't put much stress on it. It would be the perfect way to get her back in the cockpit after three months of sitting on the sidelines, watching.

It would also be a good way to stop thinking of what a dumbass thing she'd done that night.

Gaius Baltar.

She couldn't even blame it on being drunk.

Just desperate.

She wondered when she had started becoming so starved for attention that she'd slept with the first man who told her she was pretty.

No, that wasn't true. He hadn't said it in so many words, but Lee had told her she looked pretty.

He better have, dammit, she only borrowed the damn dress because of his crack about her hygiene and her need to prove to him that she could clean up good when she wanted to.

So why hadn't she gone home with him instead of Baltar?

The easy answer was that Lee hadn't asked. The slightly more complicated answer was that – theoretically – Baltar was easy. He had his own quarters, she didn't have to worry about him watching her six in a dogfight (in the halls maybe, but he had apparently been doing that anyway) and when she inevitably frakked things up, walking away from him wouldn't hurt nearly so bad.

Because she knew she would screw it up. She was a screw up. Everything, everyone, she ever touched fell apart. So it was easier to screw up with him.

She just hadn't expected to do it quite so soon or quite so spectacularly.

She'd known she was running the risk of embarrassing herself early on in the evening. When Baltar had handed her a glass of ambrosia back in his quarters and started with what struck her as really empty flattery, her mind had immediately gone to wondering what Lee would say if he ever tried to seduce her. She'd smiled at the thought of how Lee would probably blush and stammer and say the right things the wrong way once or twice before they both just laughed and he decided to kiss her instead.

Baltar had, of course, thought she was smiling at him and his worthless lines. She'd let him.

And somewhere in there his hands had been going, well, everywhere, and she'd let him do that too, even though sometimes he seemed distracted and made remarks that had nothing to do with whatever they'd been talking about, and that had made her skin crawl.

Eventually she'd decided that a little attention from someone who wanted her would have to do since she couldn't get it from someone she wanted. To make it bearable she imagined Lee saying some of those silly things (though Lee would have blushed and hated it, because he would know that the kind of bullshit lines Baltar was feeding her would never impress her) and then she began imaging that it was Lee touching her.

She should have known that was a dangerous path to go down.

She hadn't even tried to apologize for her slip. She was sure that that would have just made things worse. She'd just grabbed her clothes and left. Something she probably should have had the self-respect to do before she needed to worry about slinking off to a public bathroom in order to make herself decent.

The polite thing to do, she mused, would be to go to him tomorrow and apologize for leading him on. For using him. For embarrassing him.

But she knew herself better than that. She'd hide. Hope that she didn't run into him before it had been too long for an apology to mean anything.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, tugging the skirt down over them. She sent a brief prayer to Aphrodite, hoping that if the goddess held her in any kind of favor, she'd keep Gaius from saying anything to anyone. Especially Lee.

She and Lee were just recovering their friendship after two years of estrangement. They'd been best friends since long before she'd started dating Zak, and when she lost not only Zak, but Lee as well, to her own stupid, selfish decision, she'd nearly come undone. Only being transferred to the Galactica – away from teaching, back to flying – had kept her sane.

If word got back to him that it had been his name on her lips, she'd lose him for good. She could live without sleeping with him if she could sleep next to him when one of them had nightmares, or lay next to him when they both had insomnia. If he knew how she felt, things would get awkward. He'd have a heart-to-heart with her, telling her that she was like a sister to him and that what he'd learned wouldn't change anything between them, hadn't screwed anything up. But it would, because that was what she did best.

And this time she'd screwed herself.


End file.
